For
the past two weeks, it seems like the talk of not just the city, [but] the
world, has been Jeremy Lin, the linvigorating new starting point guard for the
New York Knicks. His name and story have dominated everything from NBA on TNT,
to NBATV, to ESPN & their tasteless employees cracking racially-fueled jokes in their article headlines, to the NFL (3 articles on the main page of
nfl.com and constant mentions on NFLNetwork). That’s right—the lintense
coverage continues to captivate everyone.

This
mass coverage has drawn hate and love from everyone. We’ve all spoken our piece
on the 2nd year pro out of Harvard. Most people refuse to speak with
any rudimentary understanding of exactly how impressive he has been. [BTW, “linpressive”
does not work.]

The
media has made a mockery of Jeremy Lin, and they have exploited him beyond
levels of recovery in many people. That doesn’t change the fact that what he
has done over the past two weeks is play some of the finest basketball anyone
has played over the same two-week course, any two-week course this season, and
perhaps any two-week course ever.

Sure,
you can bring up his turnovers all you want. Breaking down film of his
turnovers, you’ll find that there’s a few of them every game that are
legitimate great plays by the defense. However, the turnovers are skewed more
by the simple fact that defenses show him the sort of attention no other player
receives right now… the sort of attention Steve Nash is thanking God for not having
seen night-in and night-out in this same exact offense. Add that to the fact
that he is supposed to hold the ball, pass a lot, and try to make plays while
drawing an extra defender (or three) and it’s easy to forgive him more than
half of his turnovers, unless you’re
a die-hard Knicks fan of 13 days.

The
most amazing stat though, is his Linning percentage since becoming the Knicks’
starter at Point Guard. He’s 8-2 by my count, and has hit 2 game winners, and
piled on points in the 4th quarter alone in every game.

If
you’re sick of the media coverage and exploitation of Lin, turn it off. I’m not
here to add to the Linsanity, I’m simply asking you all to be reasonable in
your judgment of the guy and consider being honest to the significant impact he
has made on the Knicks, the NBA, Asian-Americans, and basketball fans in
general. He will get better, and it’s not fair of us to hate on him because
ESPN doesn’t know how to not make a comparison to him via every sport on the
planet.

So
we here at Don’t Laugh salute you, Jeremy Lin. Keep balling and winning games
and captivating the world.